Cherokee is a light and flexible webserver easier to config than Apache. I use it in my PC for my own small projects; because I've started using SNews, I must wander around its settings in order to emulate the .htaccess redirections. So, that is my solution for other eventual cherokee/snews-fans.

Go to your server conf. file in /etc/cherokee/sites-available and put this code somewhere in it. First, it must be commented out the directive "Handler common" that affects the whole site. It is assumed that the site hangs on the root directory defined in this conf. file